Angels Burning (27 page)

“I know from the statistics derived from the countless classes I've taught that two of you will do very well here,” she goes on. “You will work hard with your dogs at home and will end up with exceptionally well-trained dogs and live happily ever after.”

She begins to pace back and forth in front of the owners and their dogs. Smoke stays put with his head raised and his paws stretched out in front of him. His color and position make him look like a marble statue crouched at the top of a museum's staircase.

“Two of you will end up with dogs who are trained well enough to be functioning members of human and dog society and will be
wonderful lifelong companions for you,” Neely continues, “and one of you will end up with a dog that jumps up on visitors, yanks tirelessly at the leash when you go on walks, and forgets all his obedience commands except the occasional sit you make him do at the dinner table, where he shouldn't be in the first place, in order to give him a table scrap you shouldn't be feeding him. Despite his behavior, you will love him. He will be the one who suffers because you'll be constantly yelling at him and locking him up, which will make him a nervous wreck.”

She returns to Smoke and tells him to heel. He jumps up and trots by her side as she breaks through the circle and walks its perimeter with Smoke mere inches from the other dogs, making all but two of them go nuts, barking, growling, straining at their leashes. Smoke ignores the commotion he's causing. He and Neely return to the center of the circle and he immediately sits.

“And finally,” she says, “one of you will give up and stop coming to these classes altogether. You won't even email me to tell me you're quitting, which will be just one more example of your weak, wishy-washy personality and inability to see things through to the end that is going to make it impossible for you to train your dog. Look deep inside yourself. You already know who you are.”

Mason looks up at me, grinning.

“ ‘Look deep inside yourself,' ” he says, and puts his phone down. “Pure gold.”

“Can I ask you something about your dad?”

He sighs.

“I know what you're going to ask me. Does he play a lot of video games? The answer is yes. I like some of them, too. I don't think there's anything wrong with it.”

I smile at him.

“I don't think there's anything wrong with video games either. That wasn't what I was going to ask. Does your dad drink a lot of alcohol?”

“Sometimes.”

“Does he . . .”

I can't find the right words. I don't need to. Mason has obviously been asked these questions before.

He hangs his head and says very softly, “He doesn't do anything intra venus.”

I don't have the stomach for this. At the very least, maybe I can find out their most recent address.

“Where's the last place you were living?”

“Colorado somewhere. With Stevie. I didn't pay much attention. Dad said we wouldn't be there long.”

“So you moved around a lot?”

“Dad says it's good to move around. He says if you sit still for too long you become easy pray.”

He puts his hands together as if he's about to pray.

“I think he means prey like what a hunter chases,” I correct him.

“I think he means someone who's easy to pray for because they got so many problems but you still like them. My mom was easy pray.”

“Did you and your dad go to church?”

“I pray to Thor.”

We both focus our attention back on the class.

Neely's making the dogs heel one at a time around the circle. A young woman in pink-and-black workout clothes, matching gym shoes, and a ball cap, with a miniature dachshund is first. She walks at a normal pace; her dog's tiny legs are nothing but a blur trying to keep up.

“Her?” Mason asks. “Do you think she's the one who's going to stop coming?”

I pull a small bag of Doritos out of my purse. I stopped by the vending machine on the way out of work.

“You'd be amazed. Most of the time it's the men who wimp out.”

A portly man with a white beard is next. I'm sure he's a big hit with everyone around the holidays. He starts talking the moment Neely gestures at him. I can't hear what he's saying from this distance. Neely stands with her hands on her hips and stares at him. I know she's gone someplace else inside her head and is only seeing his mouth move.

“I know this guy,” I groan to Mason, offering him some chips. “This
is the fourth session of group classes he's enrolled in. His dog, Maggie, is ten years old. No one starts training a dog at that age.”

“She seems trained already,” Mason says, through of mouthful of chips.

“She is.”

“Then why's he here?”

“In search of a captive audience?”

The man finally shuts up and takes Maggie around the circle. She's a cute, perky little dog, snowy white with a black nose, mouth and eyes that look like they've been drawn on with a Sharpie. She heels perfectly.

Neely makes a point of praising the dog, not the human.

Next she motions at a middle-aged woman with a golden doodle. He comes up to her hip and seems to be all legs and pale fluffy fur. A wave of nervous anticipation sweeps through the other owners. They seem to be collectively holding their breath.

The woman's face grows tense with pained concentration and determination but her eyes are full of fear, making her look more like someone who's about to swan dive off a cliff into a kiddie pool than walk her dog in a loop.

“Sammy, heel,” she calls out, and takes a few steps.

Sammy immediately bolts.

She plants her feet and pulls on his leash with all her might.

“Sammy, heel!”

His forward momentum is interrupted briefly. He looks back at her, his tongue lolling out, his big furry tail waving, before lunging again.

“Stop, stop, stop,” Neely holds up both hands. “I don't see a prong collar on Sammy.”

“I can't do it,” the woman responds. “I know you told me I have to start using one, but I can't do it. They're cruel.”

“Uh-oh.” I grab Mason by the arm excitedly. “Watch. You're going to love this.”

I hold out the snack bag. We each pop a chip into our mouths.

“What's a prong collar?” Mason whispers.

“It's a training collar that has metal spikes on the inside of it that
pinch the dog's skin. Some breeds are too powerful in the neck and chest for a choke collar. They don't feel them and that makes their owners yank even harder and this can damage their tracheas. So continuing to use a choke can actually end up hurting the dog more than if the owner used a prong, but because the prong looks nasty, some people don't want to use it.”

“Prong collars are effective training tools. They're not cruel,” Neely explains in a deceptively amiable tone. “Is it cruel to make a child do homework that is difficult for him and he doesn't want to do?”

“Yes,” Mason whispers fervently to me.

The woman hesitates. Neely knows this means she's considering the possibility that it is in fact mean to make a child do his homework. Neely can't stand this particular type of nice person: the ones whose supposed kindness doesn't stem from genuine benevolence but from their own selfish desire to avoid effort or confrontation.

She takes Sammy from her owner, leads him a few feet away, and makes him sit. When she returns to the woman, Neely takes two twenty-dollar bills out of her jeans pocket and tosses them on the ground at her feet.

“Forty dollars,” she announces. “Would you like to have it?”

The woman gives her a quizzical smile.

“It's not a trick question. Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“I don't want you to have it but go ahead and try to pick it up.”

As the woman kneels down, Neely nudges her in the arm. She looks up at her surprised.

“Go ahead. Take it,” Neely says, continuing to prod her with two fingers.

The woman glances up at her again but doesn't let Neely's annoying poking stop her from grabbing the money.

She stands up and Neely takes the money from her and drops it on the ground again.

“Let's try it again. Do you want that money?”

The woman nods.

“Then take it.”

This time when the woman leans down, Neely pinches her upper arm. Hard.

“Ouch,” she yells, and covers the spot with her hand.

“Do you still want the money?” Neely asks.

The woman thinks about it. She's about to bend down again, her hand still covering the red mark on her arm, watching Neely warily the entire time, then thinks better of it.

“The difference between a choke collar and a prong,” Neely summarizes. “Which one is going to make the dog learn?”

“Sweet,” Mason exclaims. “I get the lesson, too. Sometimes you have to hurt someone to show them you love them. Like what my dad's doing to me.”

The same winded feeling comes over me that I had when Mason greeted me earlier.

“Are you a good enough detective to find him?” he quickly adds.

Our snack bag is empty. He turns it upside down and shakes a few remaining crumbs onto the palm of his hand and licks them up.

“I might not be, but I know someone who is and I've asked him to find your dad,” I reply.

I notice one of his Batman bandages is barely attached. I tug it off his leg. The wound underneath is still a little bloody.

“Okay,” he says, not sounding very convinced.

I open my purse and take out one of the clear Band-Aids I keep handy for whenever a new pair of shoes gives me blisters.

I peel off the backing, place it gently over his knobby scraped knee, and give it a squeeze.

AT HOME WE MAKE CHEESEBURGERS
on the grill for dinner and watch reruns of
The A-Team
(another classic) before I suggest we go out back and make some s'mores in my fire pit before bedtime.

Mason's roasting a marshmallow on a stick when I hear my front doorbell ring.

I ask him if he's old enough to leave alone with a fire and he makes a face at me.

I flick on my front porch light and Camio's friend Madison appears out of the black night. I don't think she wants to be seen. She glances nervously behind her.

She looks younger than she did earlier in the parking lot. The blue streaks in her hair don't seem trendy or even trashy tonight but something a child would do as part of a space-girl Halloween costume.

She's holding a backpack against her chest the way Mason holds his Trapper Keeper.

“Can you turn the light out?” she asks.

I comply then open the door and step outside.

“You're Madison, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Would you like to go in?”

“No. I . . .”

She whips her head around as if she's heard someone sneaking up behind her.

“Here.”

She shoves the backpack at me.

“This was Camio's. She kept it a secret from everyone except me. She even wrote out everything instead of putting it on her computer because she was afraid someone might get on and read it when she wasn't home.”

“What is it?” I ask, taking it from her and unzipping the top.

I peer inside and see a three-ringed binder.

“It's a book she was writing. Something psychological.” She lowers her voice. “About her family.”

“Thank you. This might be helpful.”

“She's hardly written anything yet. It's mostly just photos, but I don't want to have it, seeing as how she's dead and all.”

I zip the backpack closed.

She's still wearing the gladiator sandals she had on earlier. Her skin bulges out between the leather cutouts and has turned a painful pink. I want to tell her to take them off.

“I really do like your nails,” I offer instead.

She looks down at the gold animal prints at the end of her fingers like she's noticing them for the first time.

“The day we got them done I got in kind of a fight with Camio. Mindy Dawn wanted to get the same as me and we got into a fight about it 'cause I didn't want us to have the same nails, and Camio told us we were acting like spoiled brats. And I told her she was a bitch who thought she knew everything and thought she was better than us.”

I wait for what I know must be coming next. She's going to be remorseful. She's going to tell me how much she regrets saying something mean to her friend who was going to die a few days later.

“Camio was going to leave,” she states flatly. “She was going to go to college and get a job and move away and forget all about us. I'm really sad she's dead, but this way she can be my friend forever.”

“I guess that's one way to look at it,” I say. “Can I ask you something about Camio that's been kind of gnawing at me?”

“I guess.”

“Her sister told me she was crazy about babies and that she wanted to have a whole bunch of them. I don't know many teenage girls who are crazy about babies. Plus Camio sounded like she was more concerned with school and a career than having children. Did she ever talk about babies with you?”

A sly smile creeps across Madison's face. I'm not sure about the meaning behind it. I hope she's going to explain.

“Cami liked to mess with people,” she volunteers. “You know. See if she could get them to do what she wanted without asking them to do it. Make them think it was what they wanted when it probably wasn't. More psychological bullshit.

“One night she got in a wicked fight with Jessy about this same shit you were just talking about. Cami was going to leave and have a great life and Jessy was going to be a loser living in a double-wide with a bunch of snot-nosed brats and a husband who beat on her. You know, typical sister stuff.”

“I don't remember ever having that particular fight with my sister,” I comment, “but I hear you. Go on.”